Red Thread(s)

Received a letter from V. yesterday, wch I read over coffee this morning. Truly correspondent, she writes, "I love ruthless editing."

"What have we overlooked / Nostalgia is another name for one's sense of loss at the thought that one has sadly gone along happily overlooking something, who knows what / Perhaps there were three things, no one of which made sense without the other two [...]
What was the Greek word for that, the big chance for each event - kairos?
-- Lyn Hejinian, from Happily

a scene not in the script
The funny way things flow, and follow... I came across this interview with Claire Denis again today, and her phrase "write scenes which are not in the script" resonated so, I wanted to post it here; I cut and paste it, and when I look back at this page (I thought I might have copied something out from a book of Proust criticism, or written something about Derek Jarman; I know I've meant to write something about Genet for awhile now) -- I look back at this page with its sage green background and I find that I haven't been here in awhile, and this quote follows a still from Hong Sangsoo's Woman on the Beach -- in wch a director is writing his script -- the juxtaposition is quite unintentional. But these are the red threads, I think, I have my interests and obsessions, repetitions... sketching around works becomes the work, the process. Marking, indicating space as a way of saying what is, indicating what is not.

Working through paratexts; Denis speaks of writing a character's diary for Beau Travail, and working out the screenplay from that; Godard might direct an actor to "read this book, go to the museum and look at the Rodins" as a way of preparing for a role; Rivette shot much of Celine and Julie Go Boating on a day-to-day basis, based on his actor's dreams from the night before. The work, film in these case, constructed out of paratexts.
Perhaps I can say that in a sense, when I write here it's as if by a character walking into a scene. But also, Wednesday night, I wrote a post late at night, tired & on the edge of sleep, wch is not my usual working method. This text exists, it may be transcribed -- at least I intended to do so at the time. It's an integral post nonetheless, hoverring at the periphery, subtly shading what may come: "a scene not in the script" that may in the end even be lost to me; my handwriting's terrible.

"There are films where you need to rehearse, but it's true, I don't like rehearsing scenes that I'm about to shoot. So there are times when you need to rehearse something a little different. Jean-Pol and I write scenes which are not in the script, just for rehearsal purposes. Because I'm too afraid, if I rehearse a scene, that I'll find myself saying during the shoot: it was so good earlier, now it's gone."
-- from an interview with Claire Denis